2. Significant improvement in morning crowds
The opening gate rush has been a major stress point when visiting Disney’s Hollywood Studios over the past year. While changes to Rise of the Resistance boarding group distribution curbed the ultra-early mornings we saw a year ago, there was no escaping the fact that if you wanted the best chance to get onto the ride, you needed to be inside the park before opening. Even after Walt Disney World’s long closure, this problem didn’t go away—Disney found ways to mitigate crowds by limiting capacity and adding the second distribution time, but opening gate still produced the biggest congestion issues of the day.
We arrived a little after opening time, and we noticed the difference immediately. It seems that the change has helped reduce morning crowds at Disney’s Hollywood Studios at least somewhat. The parking lot was not nearly as full as on our previous visits, to the point we actually were directed to park in the front row now that empty cars weren’t having to be distanced. Bag check went faster than I’ve ever seen, and even with a character cavalcade taking place, Hollywood Boulevard was decidedly easy to navigate.
Once again, this proves that it looks like Disney made a smart call changing the strategy for managing the Rise of the Resistance virtual queue. Parties with a low boarding group number (you only have an hour to check in once your boarding group is called) or want a full day in the park can arrive for opening gate, but casual visitors and those with a higher group number don’t necessarily need to be there that early.
3. Increased ride capacity seems to be helping wait times
In our last update, we noted that wait times had increased significantly across Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Unlike the pre-Labor Day season, it seemed like the only time to guarantee shorter queues was during the last two hours of the day. While some of this has been due to crowds, the larger issues has been reduced ride capacity due to social distancing and sanitation measures. Most attractions have socially distanced guests by giving every party their own vehicle.
Disney has taken on this issue by adding plexiglass barriers to ride vehicles on some attractions, including Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, and the Tower of Terror. While this measure can prove a minor annoyance for guests stuck behind these barriers (more on that later), they’ve proven a reasonable way to shorten wait times and increase attraction capacity. While there still isn’t a completely predictable way to catch only short lines (besides riding the last two hours of the day), we did notice some shifts in trends for rides that previously had long waits.
Video: YouTube, @MyKingdomForAMouse
On the day we visited, the park’s two coaster attractions--Slinky Dog Dash and the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster—held the longest waits of the day. This makes sense as there hasn’t really been a good way to increase capacity on these rides. Slinky Dog Dash clocked in with the longest wait time of the day at 80 minutes starting around 11:20 AM. It seems a lot of people are heading straight for this attraction in the morning as the queue had already reached 70 minutes by 10:20. Wait times didn’t lower much until 5:15 PM, hanging at a steady 60 minutes for the rest of the day. The Rock n’ Roller Coaster fared a little better with shorter waits first thing in the morning, but it also maintained a fairly steady 50-70 minute wait throughout the day.
The biggest change we saw was a significant improvement in wait times for Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway. On our previous visit, this remained one of the longest queues in the park all day long, never dipping below 45 minutes. On our recent visit, while the park’s newest ride did see a large rush first thing in the morning (with waits around 60 minutes), it seems that after the lunch rush, queue times for this attraction lowered to 40 minutes. By 6:30 PM, the wait was only 25 minutes long, which is excellent if you’re determined to spend as little time in line as possible.
Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run has remained a bit of an oddball for wait times with the highest crowds forming around lunch time (with a 60 minute wait). Once again, this line continued to shorten throughout the day, with waits as low as 20 minutes by 6:30 PM. Do be aware that it appears Disney is getting more accurate with their wait times, so if the time says 20 minutes, it really might take that long. Previously, it seemed like Disney was majorly overestimating queue times.
Here are some specifics for wait times we saw throughout the day:
10:30 AM
- Slinky Dog Dash – 70m
- Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, Tower of Terror – 60m
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster and Millennium Falcon – 45m
- Star Tours – 10m
- Toy Story Mania – 30m
11:20 AM
- Slinky Dog Dash – 80m
- Tower of Terror, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, Millennium Falcon, and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway – 60m
- Star Tours – 45m
- Toy Story Mania – 30m
2:00 PM
- Slinky Dog Dash – 80m
- Millennium Falcon – 55m
- Tower of Terror and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster – 50m
- Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway – 40m
- Star Tours and Toy Story Mania – 20m
5:15 PM
- Slinky Dog Dash – 60m
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster – 50m
- Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway – 45m
- Tower of Terror and Millennium Falcon – 40m
- Star Tours – 30m
- Toy Story Mania – 20m
6:30 PM
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster – 70m
- Slinky Dog Dash – 60m
- Tower of Terror – 30m
- Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway – 25m
- Millennium Falcon, Toy Story Mania, and Star Tours – 20m
Comments
I had a recent trip to Disney over thanksgiving break, and ive noticed that Disney lets people into the parks before the posted opening and some rides were running (I was in Hollywood studios, on slinky dog dash at 9:30)